


Warmth

by Ressick



Category: Grey's Anatomy
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-31
Updated: 2014-08-31
Packaged: 2018-02-15 14:11:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,244
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2231958
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ressick/pseuds/Ressick
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A Leah minific set in the 10x17 AU deleted scene - the one where Leah tells Arizona and Callie off after passing her boards and getting a fellowship/job at Mayo.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Warmth

You’re a very socially awkward person.  You don’t make friends easily, and you especially don’t meet a lot of people who seem to quickly “get” you.  You’re very used to being alone.  You manage the occasional one night stand or quick hookup, but no one ever calls you back.  You’ve been given more than one fake number, too, calling someone only to reach a dog groomer or funeral home.  You know you can be super clingy, but every time someone looks at you, you’re stupid enough to hope that person will  _keep_  looking at you.  You keep hoping to find someone who will call you back.  
  
Then you do.  And you know it’s a bad idea from the outset, but you let yourself get attached.  You let yourself be a placeholder for an estranged spouse.  Or if not a placeholder, at least a distraction from that estrangement.  If you ignore the messiness of the situation, it’s something you’ve never had before - someone who likes you, who pays attention to you, who cares at least a little tiny bit, who trusts you just enough to make you feel special.  You feel normal and  _wanted_  for a brief, shining moment.  It’s not perfect.  There are rules you have to follow that you know are unhealthy, you know you care far more than she does, but it’s still more than you’ve ever had before.  
  
Suddenly, you don’t have it anymore.  And you were crouched there in the corner, out of sight, listening as her estranged spouse asked your lover to come home.  In the blink of an eye, you lose the best thing you’ve ever had.  And that a clandestine affair with a woman estranged from her wife is the best thing you ever had - you know that’s pathetic.  But as the weeks carried on and they didn’t reconcile, you really let yourself hope.  You let yourself want more.  And that’s all gone.  
  
So you’re angry.  And hurt.  Tossed aside like yesterday’s bloody gauze.  Unkindly.  Coldly.  Cruelly.  By a woman you know can be incredibly tender and kind.  And when the no-longer-estranged wife finds out about your “ten plus times” with her wife, you lose your cool.  So does the wife.  Who’s also supposed to be your teacher.  
  
It might not be the best decision you’ve ever made, but you can’t take it sitting down.  You feel like if you don’t say something, you’ll never get the education you need to do your job.  And maybe you aren’t as clear as you could be to HR.  Maybe you even exaggerate a bit.  Maybe HR exaggerates as they type up your complaint.  You don’t know.  You’ve just seen how things work at this place, the culture of “just buck and deal” whether it’s your ex’s wife shouting in the ER or the overall culture of behavior between surgeons and those below them - interns, residents, nurses, drug reps.  Given the rumblings still going around when you had just arrived, it seems to have been that way forever.  
  
The way things go down with HR, you do regret bothering.  Nothing seems to change except the way people look at you.  Like you were too weak to handle the situation.  Nevermind that the situation should never have happened - from her getting drunk in the supply closet to booty-calling you in the middle of the night like that was something that was okay.   
  
So for the rest of your residency, you avoid them.  It’s a mutual thing.  They avoid you too, making sure that you’re not on their service, making sure they teach you, as little as possible.  You avoid Peds and Ortho like the plague.  And part of you burns with anger.  It’s not healthy, and the therapist you try to see once a week, time permitting, is helping you work through it, but it’s there and it won’t go away.  They’ve worked through whatever their issues were ( _she_ never told you about them, and you only had rumor to go on).  They’re blissfully happy.  They have another child in fairly short order.  They’re the happy family the rest of the hospital aspires to emulate.  All the damage they’ve done - to each other, to you - is ignored in the face of picture perfect familial bliss.   
  
You apply to jobs and fellowships as far away as you can go and not end up anywhere near home.  You think you get such stellar recommendations just to get you out of town.  You don’t care.  You’ll take it and run, and prove them all wrong in the end.  And when the glorious day comes that you’ve passed your boards and you’ve gotten your fellowship, you can’t resist the chance to tell them off.  
  
Because  _she_  never apologized.  For your inappropriate, unhealthy relationship.  For throwing you out so coldly.  For compromising your education by avoiding actually teaching you - she’s the best in her field and so is her wife and you have always wanted/needed to learn from the best.  You lived through years of coldness and solitude and being on the outs with the entire hospital community.  You know you have responsibility for the situation too, but if she won’t shoulder hers you can’t bear the burden of your own and hers too.  You won’t.  You are already the interloper, the whore, the other woman, in the eyes of the hospital.  Taking up her responsibility is just too much for you to manage.  
  
Except you lie when you tell them off.  You don’t hate  _her_.  You might hate her wife, a teeny little bit, but only out of what you know is a particularly immature strain of jealousy.  Your real emotions aren’t hate, though you’re fairly sure there’s no word in English for the twisted feeling in your gut you get whenever they’re in your view.  
  
When you get off the plane in freaking Minnesota, you have a referral to a local therapist, a lot of drive to be the best, and two pictures tucked in your wallet.  One, the only picture you have with your late roommate, one she had taken, a selfie where she’d thrown an arm around your shoulders and snapped a picture the day you moved in to your apartment together.  The other, the one secretly taken picture you have of  _her_.  Whether it’s something you printed out to put in your wallet as a reminder to never again let yourself fall like that, be  _used_  like that, or if it’s a reminder of what you once had – what she made you feel, like you were worth something to someone – you don’t know.   
  
In the picture she is sprawled out asleep on that huge hotel bed of hers, twisted sheets tucked around her nude form.  Everything that should be covered is, but the glimpse of her skin, the definition of her bare shoulders, the way her hair curls around her face, is enough to make you flush, even these years later.  You’re quite sure her wife would break every bone in your body if she knew you had such an intimate picture.  Perhaps you keep it in defiance of their dismissal of you.  As if your feelings, your life, never mattered to either of them.  You knew  _she_  was capable of such coldness.  But you also, for a brief moment, knew her warmth.  
  
Standing in Minnesota, alone and far from anyone you know, during a particularly cool spring, that memory is perhaps the only thing that keeps you from shivering.


End file.
